Tony K's Blog

Continual loss is a fact of life. That sounds really harsh, but it's true. From the day you are born, you begin to leave innocence and youth behind. When we are young, the loss has some very powerful compensations. Wisdom replaces innocence, strength and ability replace youth. At some point, growth in wisdom tapers off, but it does grow until, perhaps, dementia sets in. Strength begins to decline shortly after you get it unless you work hard to maintain it, in which case you lose time. But those are the gradual losses. We see them coming and they are inevitable. We accept them. Sudden wrenching loss is inevitable for most of us too. The parent or spouse who dies in an accident or from a heart attack. The swindler who cons us out of our life savings (think Enron). These wrenching losses change us--even when they happen to someone else. When we hear of a child who is kidnapped while walking to school, we start driving the kids everyday. We lose time, the kids lose exercise and indepe...

We did it. We bought a Windows computer. It hurts real bad. We needed a PC that could run Microsoft Project, and I didn't want to go through the Virtual PC rigamarole on a Mac. It hurts.

Now the Cubs are all alone in the Major League Baseball futility standings. It's sad. I wish they would have won before my Mom died. She was a diehard Cubs fan. Team Last WS Win Cubs 1908 Indians 1948 Giants 1954 Rangers ---- Est. 1961 (Washington Senators) Astros ---- Est. 1962 Padres ---- Est. 1969 Expos/Nationals ---- Est. 1969 Brewers ---- Est. 1969 (as the Seattle Pilots) Mariners ---- Est. 1977 Pirates 1979 Phillies 1980 Cardinals 1982 Orioles 1983 Tigers 1984 Royals 1985 Mets 1986 Twins 1987 Dodgers 1988 A's 1989 Reds 1990 Blue Jays 1993 Rockies ---- Est. 1993 Braves 1995 Devil Rays ---- Est. 1998 Yankees 2000 Diamondbacks 2001 Angels 2002 Marlins 2003 Red Sox 2004 White Sox 2005

Woo hoo. They did it. White Sox win the World Series. First the Red Sox, now the White Sox. All we need now is the Cubs and we will have definitive proof that Hell has, in fact, frozen over.

Having grown up in Chicago, I am a long time victim of Chicago sports. Oh sure, there were a few bright spots (Jordan and the Bulls, Walter Payton and the Bears), but the record of futility may be unmatched. I have just watched the second world series game in 2005. The Chicago White Sox are now ahead 2 games to 0 and I am cautiously optimisitic that maybe, just maybe, the White Sox might have a chance of winning three world series games before once again breaking my heart. We'll see. World Series Tickets $185; Cub Fans At Home In October: Priceless I have been pondering something. In Chicago, you are either a Cubs fan or a White Sox fan. There is no middle ground. I know that most cities with more than one team are this way as well, but I think that Chicago it is a little more polarized than most places. Why is that? If anyone out there has insight on that I would like to hear from you. In my family, my mother was a diehard Cubs fan. I'm not sure why I became a White Sox fan th...

My name is Tony and I'm a planner. There I said it. Six years ago I was describing the work I was doing to someone and he said, "Oh, you're a planner." I was shocked to be called such a name. Today I am out of the closet. I am not a planner though in the mold that most organizations think of planners. In many places, planning is a combination of very mechanical rollups and dysfuctional negotiations; collect sandbagged data, add it all together, twist arms until people go back to what they were willing to live with, repeat yearly. This type of planning adds little if any value, but is very common. In many places, even the adding up of the data is extremely painful. We used to use Excel for adding up all our data. I have no problem with Excel, when used as designed. Once you start to treat it as a database, all kinds of bad things can happen. First, Excel has capacity limitations. The tool I had built in Excel had to contain 500 assets, 20 to 50 years looking forward of...

Castro made a very eloquent, apparently sincere, almost certainly politically motivated offer to help by sending 1,100 doctors to help in New Orleans. Our official response was to ignore him. How many people have died and will die because of this tacit refusal of aid? What if Bush had made a positive response? How might it have gone? "My fellow Americans. America and Cuba has an intertwined history going back hundreds of years. That came to an abrupt end in the late 1950s when Fidel Castro led a communist revolution in that country. Since the early 60s, the US has observed a trade and travel embargo with Cuba. "In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Cuba has made a historic offer of assistance to the United States.They have offered the services of 1100 physicians to assist in saving the lives of the desperate people of New Orleans. I know that there will be people who disagree with this decision, especially in Florida, where many former residents of Cuba still reside. This decisio...